Portuguese Morning Quirks: Greeting the Dawn with 'Goodnight

My family and I awoke to a morning that despite the darkness of night still clinging on, promised to be yet another blue sky, hot sunshine day. Being further South than the UK, summertime daylight hours are actually shorter in Portugal than in GB, but far outweighing this is that Wintertime has less darkness. Anyway, all but at the height of Summer, when the joint effort of the radio alarm and our dog rouse us from our sleep the above circumstances mean that 6 am is still dark. Now after verbally painting the above picture I would like to share with you one of the quirky (to us Brits, anyway) Portuguese characteristics. In our experience, and I hasten to add that it is only in our experience, if when the hour of 6 am arrives the morning light has not arrived with it, then the hour will be considered as night. We first became aware of this while listening to a national radio programme, propped up in bed with cups of tea, remarking to each other that if it was dark outside our windows, the host, a Sr Jose Candeias, greeted his callers with a ‘Boa noite’, instead of the expected ‘Bom dia’. Yet despite living in Portugal for almost thirteen years, it was only a couple of weeks ago that for the first time I had the opportunity to experiment with this ‘unusual’ morning greeting myself. It certainly felt strange saying ‘Goodnight’ to a person setting up their market stall as the day was dawning, but despite my reticence, the reply was returned in a matter-of-fact jovial manner. Now, with Autumn and winter at the doorstep, I guess there will be many more opportunities to wish friends and neighbours a ‘Goodnight’ as we all start our days...

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